Stella Myrtle -- Pioneer

Keep your fingers crossed that I'm not struck down by lightning for posting this! This is Craig's grandmother, Stella Myrtle. He's talked about her ability to petrify small children and dogs with her stern dirty look (the Stella Myrtle) for years, so I cracked up when I saw this black and white among the photos in his mom's apartment. She is an intimidating sight to behold. She thought Craig and his sister were extremely spoiled children. Stella Myrtle was extremely religious and thought cards, dancing, women in pants, movies, alcohol, etc... were the Devil's work. But the woman had to be a rock to raise six kids by herself during the Depression. Her husband died in 1932 in the midst of the Dirty 30's leaving her to support and raise the children on her own.

Kansas Dirt Storm -- 1935

She dictated a short story of her life to a nurse in the Kansas Soldier's Home at Fort Dodge, the old folk's home where she died in 1972. She was born in 1887 eighteen miles southwest of Dodge City on her family's homestead. She talks about her parents moving by covered wagon from Moberly, Missouri to Dodge City in 1886, blizzards where her father used a rope to get from the house to the barn, her mother hauling water for livestock and household purposes a mile and a half by sled from the nearest stream, attending school in a one-room schoolhouse, and marrying Mr. Rabourn in 1906. It's a real Little House on the Prairie story.